The original SHERPA partnership was formed for the JISC-funded SHERPA project (2002-2006) and drew from research-led universities with an active interest in establishing an example of a then-new concept - an open access institutional repository. Since its inception, SHERPA has been an active presence on the developing field of institutional repository use. The partnership continues to collaborate in a number of open access projects. Currently SHERPA has 26 institutions overall, consisting of 24 HE institutions, the British Library and the AHDS. Trinity College Dublin is an Affiliate Partner of SHERPA. As such, we have agreed to support the following aims and goals:

Endorse the principle that publicly-funded research should be made publicly available

Undertake to provide a web-based OAI-compliant repository access to which is free and unrestricted, and populate it with 'e-prints'

Commit to support members of their local communities in depositing material by providing advice and services as appropriate

Agree to undertake activities advocating the use of open-access repositories as a way of informing scholarly communication within their own communities and, if appropriate, beyond

The aim of this initiative is to explore the creation of a European model for the deposit, discovery, use and long-term care of research theses in an open access environment. DART-Europe proposes to align institutional and national e-theses developments across Europe, and the wider open access repository movement, by enabling free-at-the-point-of-use access to the full text of electronic research theses.